


Time's Gone By

by beautyoftheshadows (orphan_account)



Category: All New X-Men (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 07:05:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5407505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/beautyoftheshadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott and Jean, moonlight and hand-holding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time's Gone By

**Author's Note:**

> Title from and work inspired by "Nightclothes" by Radical Face.

Jean’s smiling as she steps onto the roof, her nightgown fluttering around her ankles. “Careful,” she says, turning to offer her hand. He takes it, hesitant, following her into the moonlight. The light catches in her hair in a way sunlight doesn’t, in a way that makes him want to stop time and just stay here forever. He locks that detail away in his mind, promises himself that even if everything goes to hell tomorrow and he never sees her again, he’ll remember the way she shines in the moonlight for the rest of his life.

“Come on,” she says, and the moment is gone as they’re picking their way across the shingles, hand-in-hand. The air still smells of the afternoon’s rain, but the sky is mostly clear, just a few wispy clouds and one beautiful full moon.

They perch carefully on the edge, and when she lays back his breath catches, already automatically calculating the angle at which she would fall, the angle at which he’d have to fire a blast to slow her descent, wondering whether or not it’d be enough to save something so fragile.

“Hey,” she whispers, “I’d catch you if you fell.” And that takes him by surprise, the idea that maybe they were too busy saving each other to notice that they might need to think about themselves. So he lays down beside her, their fingers intertwined, gazing at the moon. He’s lying on the roof of a mansion, holding hands with a girl who can move mountains with her mind, and it’s the first time in a long time he’s felt like he can find some peace.

 

* * *

 

The moon, shining in all its splendor over Central Park, doesn’t look as wonderful now that he’s been there. Not now that he’s walked on its surfaces and watched the woman he loved kill herself to save them all. Even so, the reflection in her eyes, big and bright and hopeful, is as beautiful as ever.

And maybe they were, neither of them, the kids they used to be, too much pain and sorrow and life under their belts for them to be those people anymore. But when she holds his hand, he believes in that same old story: _We’re gonna be okay, Scott. You and me, we’re gonna get that happy ending._

He just wishes he still deserved it.

 

* * *

He’d forgotten how her hair glinted in the moonlight. He’d sworn, once, that that was one detail he’d never lose, but breaking promises is all he seems to do these days.

She’s stretched across the hillside, the wind tugging at the ends of her hair and carrying the sound of her laughter to where he stands in the doorway of the Weapon X facility. For just a minute, he can almost believe it’s really her, but the truth is, it isn’t. This girl, the one with the beautiful hair and the friends she’d do anything for and a heart that still beats inside her chest, she’s just a child. She isn’t his best friend and maybe she never will be, now.

He turns and walks away. Alone in his room, the door locked, he sits quietly down on his bed and closes his eyes. Suddenly, he can feel her warmth pressed up against his skin, and he can smell her, strawberry shampoo and Chanel No. 5, autumn rain and the scent of _home_.

“Hey Slim,” she says, and he’s finding it hard to breathe, as usual, finding it hard to remember why he would even want to breathe, why he has to keep on living when death would mean finding his way back into her arms.

She shifts against him, in that way that he knows means she’s tucking her feet up underneath her and brushing her hair out of her eyes. “I forgive you,” she whispers, as she threads her fingers through his.

They’ve been having this same conversation on loop, every night since she died. What she means by it has changed vastly, even if her words haven’t: I forgive you for letting me die, for Hank getting tortured, for raising children the way Charles raised us, for letting Logan leave, for Charles’s death, for _everything_.

“I forgive you. I forgive you. I’ll always catch you when-“

And that’s where Scott stops it, his eyes snapping open. Because those were her words to him and they mean something, even after all this time. He won’t ruin her memory by having some half-formed image of his best friend parrot the words she used to say with such feeling.

He’s ruined a lot of memories in his life, but there are some- a quiet night on the roof of Xavier’s, a moment in the heart of New York City when her eyes were the brightest lights he’d ever seen- that deserve better than that. And the memory of those two fragile kids, perched on the edge of a roof, both desperately trying to keep the other one from falling, is perhaps the strongest thing he has left to hold onto.


End file.
